Crows Feet On the Prettiest Eyes
by Salomedancing
Summary: Sarah Jane meets the Curator at the National Gallery.


**AN: I am sure that I wasn't the only one who screamed in utter delight when Tom Baker showed up at the 50th Anniversary episode. This little fic sprung to my mind when I listened to The Beautiful South's _Prettiest Eyes_. I very often do get inspiration from music, even if I don't do songfics.**

_**Lets take a look at these crows feet, just look  
Sitting on the prettiest eyes  
Sixty 25th of Decembers  
Fifty-nine 4th of Julys  
You can't have too many good times, children  
You can't have too many lines  
Take a good look at these crows feet  
Sitting on the prettiest eyes **_

When Sarah Jane was young she had run up the steps to the National Gallery and not even been breathless. Now she walked slowly and when she reached the top she had to stop and rest for a while. That was age for you, she thought with a wry smile. Your mind was still running, but your body was on the outlook for a nice bench to sit on for a while.

It had been a long time since her last visit and she walked with slow steps through the rooms, feeling like the familiar paintings were old friends and in a way they were, she had visited the gallery so many times as she grew up and then as a young woman. Her steps echoed on the polished floors, it was still early and there were few visitors yet, and she mostly found herself alone. Which was probably why she took special notice of the white-haired man with a cane, deep into contemplation of a van Deuren, It was something over his back that seemed familiar, perhaps it was someone she had met in her work and she walked a little faster. She had not come here to be drawn into a conversation with someone she hardly knew, but when she was about to pass him he turned and smiled and her heart stopped.

"Oh my Sarah Jane. I've been waiting for you for such a long time and you are here at last."

She had known him in many shapes, but here he was, the dearest of them all. The wild brown curls were gone, he was a little stooped and his face lined. Old, he had grown old, but somehow still the same, the blue eyes, the Cheshire cat grin. She couldn't speak, and for a moment she thought she might faint and his pleased smile disappeared into a look of concerns.

"I have startled you. Come, let's sit down."

He took her hand and led her away, to a door marked "Private. The Curator". The room inside seemed to be a mixture between living room and office, filled with books and paintings and a few artefacts that were spoke alien to Sarah Jane's experienced eyes. He helped her sit down on a sofa and sat down himself, quite slowly she noticed. She also found she could speak again.

"You! But you regenerated, how can you be here?"

He smiled again. "I'm me, of course, but I'm not that me."

"Oh, you can go back to an earlier body! I thought you always had to change."

"No, not at all." He grew serious and took her hand again. His was still so large that her little one disappeared in it. "This is my last life, Sarah Jane. I'm so very, very old now and I won't regenerate again. These are my last years and they aren't even many from a human point of view and I wanted to live that time in the body I was happiest in. And I want to spend it with the girl with the prettiest eyes I ever saw."

Tears threatened to choke her. "Me?"

"Of course. My brave, wonderful Sarah. I have been waiting for you here."

"But I'm old now! Why did you have to wait?"

His finger trailed the wrinkles that nowadays radiated from her eyes. "Crows sparks on pretty eyes doesn't make them less pretty. I had to wait because I am past running." He nodded at his cane. "I need it. I need my slow days and I need my rest as well."

She understood. "You needed to wait until my running days were over as well."

"Yes."

She slapped his arm with her free hand, the other hand was still gripping his hard. "Still, you have been here the whole time. You beast, I bet you knew when I visited."

His eyes twinkled. "Oh yes, always."

"As I said; beast!" But she couldn't get the proper annoyed tone in her voice because she was smiling. "You will have to make it up to me."

"For the rest of my life, Sarah Jane." He leaned forward and kissed her for the first time and it was just like she had always thought it would be and age and years piled on top each other didn't matter anymore. His mind kissed hers and in there they were still young, would always be young and there they could always run.

END


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